Tag Tuesday: Books I Want To Read (But Don’t Want To Read)

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This week’s Top Ten Tuesday was

September 14: Books With Numbers In the Title

But I feel like I did a list like this pretty recently (OK so it was 2 years ago, but how creative can you get with the topic really?). So I decided to do a Tag Tuesday instead. This tag was created by @jamishelves and I first discovered it on @zeezeewithbooks. I decided on this one because my home is slowly being taken over by books I want to read but haven’t gotten around to yet. Everything here has been living on my shelves for a long, long time…

A BOOK YOU FEEL THE NEED TO READ BECAUSE EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT IT

Actually I don’t think I have anything on mu TBR shelf that I feel like I have to read for that reason. I cheated and used my kindle for this one. I’m going with Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I keep meaning to read it, but putting it aside and reading something else instead, for one reason or another. I really, really want to read this one though, because I’ve heard great things about it.

A BOOK THAT’S REALLY LONG

I have a few really long ones on the shelf (they tend to be put off for the longest because I know they’re a big investment in terms of time) I think the longest book on my unread shelf is Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (1007 pages). I enjoyed its predecessor, The Name of the Wind, but it’s hard to dive into a book this long. Plus who knows if/when book three will come out. I’d hate to get invested more in the series and then just be waiting, and waiting, and waiting…

A BOOK YOU OWN/HAD ON YOUR TBR FOR TOO LONG

I picked up Kristin Lavransdatter Part I: The Bridal Wreath about ten years ago at a library sale, because I’d heard that this three part novel was a great read. But before I started reading, I learned that the translation that I had wasn’t the preferred one (the consensus seems to be that the Penguin Classics edition is the best), and I wasn’t sure if I should give the one I had a shot or go straight for the preferred translation. So I put it off until I decided. And now it’s been a decade.

A BOOK THAT WAS “REQUIRED” READING
(E.G., SCHOOL TEXT, REALLY POPULAR CLASSIC — SOMETHING YOU FEEL OBLIGATED TO READ)

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard is a book I got for two reasons. One is that it was on some list I saw, somewhere, of books every writer should read (or something along those lines). Two is that I want to appreciate nature more. I feel like I’m very caught up in the human world, and I like the idea of slowing down, meditating and philosophizing on the natural world. But while that idea appeals to me, it seems like it might be a slog to read through.

A BOOK THAT INTIMIDATES YOU

The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett is the third book in the Lymond Chronicles. I enjoyed the first two but with an enigmatic hero who speaks in multilingual riddles and obscure references, it can be tough going. I actually want to buy this guide before I do read it.

A BOOK THAT YOU THINK MIGHT BE SLOW

The Overstory by Richard Powers won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It got rave reviews. But it’s about trees. How exciting can that be?

A BOOK YOU NEED TO BE IN THE RIGHT MOOD FOR

I read Paullina Simons’ The Tiger Catcher in the right mood and ended up enjoying it a lot more than I expected to. Now I’m waiting for the right mood to read the second in the trilogy, A Beggar’s Kingdom.

A BOOK YOU’RE UNSURE YOU WILL LIKE

I suppose I’m a little bit nervous about The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. I love academic settings in books, and I love books dealing with the marriage plot in general (think Austen, Eliot) but I’ve had mixed reactions to some of the author’s past work.

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Top Ten Tuesday: TBR Procrastination

For That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday:

September 10: Books On My TBR I’m Avoiding Reading and Why (maybe you’re scared of it, worried it won’t live up to the hype, etc.) (submitted by Caitlin @ Caitlin Althea)

Books that are intimidating because they’re really long

1. Nor Gold by Kerry Lynne– Second in The Pirate Captain series 753 pages.  I’ve also heard it ends with a cliffhanger, so I’m not sure I want to start it until I have the next book nearby.

 

 

2. Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn– Got really great reviews but between the heavy subject matter and the fact that it’s 768 pages I keep putting it off.

 

 

3. The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss– Second in the Kingkilller Chronicles. I loved the first, but this is 1120 pages. Also, number three hasn’t been published yet so maybe I’ll wait until then and finish the series when it’s complete.

 

4. Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey– First in the Kushiel’s Legacy series. It’s been recommended many times, it’s sitting on my shelf, but the premise doesn’t really grab me and it’s 912 pages.  I’ll get to  it at some point.

 

5. Trinity by Leon Uris– This was recommended by several people but it’s a heavy subject matter and it’s 894 pages.

 

 

 

6. Kristin Lavranstradder by Sigrid Undset– This is technically a trilogy of three normal sized books but apparently the translation matters, and I have the first book in the wrong translation. At some point I’ll try to read it and if it’s no good I’ll go for this edition which is supposed to be the “good” translation, but it’s all 3 books together making it a cumbersome 1168 pages.

7. A Column of Fire by Ken Follett– Third in Follett’s Kingsbridge trilogy. I liked the first two but at 923 pages it’s hard to dive into.

 

 

 

8. The Revolution of Marina M. by Janet Fitch– I loved Fitch’s White Oleander and I’m  interested in this genre change (literary fiction to historical fiction) but the fact that it’s 812 pages makes it intimidating to get started on.

 

Books I’m hesitant to start because of content

9. The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett– This is third in Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles series. I liked the first two but they’re filled with obscure references and we rarely get into the main character’s head so it takes a lot of focus to read.

 

10. An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear- This is the fifth in the Maisie Dobbs series. I’ve been enjoying it but after a while the terrible things that these characters go through (so far it’s not limited to war, PTSD, drug addiction, illness, and death) make it a fairly depressing experience.

 

Top Ten Tueday: Books I Didn’t Read in 2017 But Meant To

For The Broke and The Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesday:

January 9: Ten Books We Meant To Read In 2017 But Didn’t Get To (and totallyyyy plan to get to in 2018!!)

1. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien– I know. I can’t really call myself a fantasy reader (let alone writer) and not have read these! I will, I swear! They’re sitting on my shelf waiting for me. I think part of the reason I haven’t read them yet is that I want to have a nice chunk of time to really get lost in them. But I did make some progress already. I decided to get started and I’m about 100 pages into The Fellowship of the Ring.

 

2. Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey– This one starts off a series has been recommended to me for years. I have it sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me. But again I feel like I’m waiting for a point where I can just read, and lose myself in the world of the books.  That time may never come though!  I do want to get through some of these books before I’m a senior citizen.

 

3. Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson– I’m not usually a fan of “westerns” but this was very highly recommended by a coworker, who isn’t usually a big “reader” so I feel like I should give it a chance. Actually plot-wise it does sound interesting. It’s about Cynthia Ann Parker, who was kidnapped by the Comanche Indians at the age of nine and grew up to be a Comanche woman. It’s based on a true story and is supposedly very well researched.

 

4. Trinity by Leon Uris– I’m a fan of author Cindy Brandner’s Exit Unicorns series and she cites this as a book that book that was hugely influential to her. She says “Long ago I read the book Trinity by Leon Uris. It changed everything for me. I was thirteen at the time and I remember reading that last page, closing the book with a sense of profound loss and just knowing that this is what I wanted to do, tell stories that made people think, cry, laugh and create characters that would live for others as vividly as they lived for me. People that readers would consider personal friends and that they would wonder about long after the last page was turned.” I certainly want that experience as a reader!

5. After Anatevka by Alexandra Silber– In 2007 Alexandra Silber played Hodel in the London revival of The Fiddler on the Roof. In 2015 she played Hodel’s older sister Tzeitzel in the Broadway revival of the show. She’s obviously spent a lot of creative time and space with these characters. In this book, she imagines what Hodel’s life would be like after the curtain falls. We leave Hodel on the way to join her lover, Perchick in a Siberian labor camp.  This book picks up at that point. Often actors imagine a backstory for their characters, but I like the idea of imagining a “forward story” for one. I think that when you’ve spent a lot of time and energy in a creative world, it’s can be hard to let go of. This is an interesting way of keeping it alive. Plus, a historical love story against a turn of the century Russian backdrop? Yes, please!

6. Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn– This was written in 1966 and has been in print ever since its publication, yet for some reason, it doesn’t get talked about all that much. Learning that made me curious. It’s about a black man and a white woman who fall in love in Depression-era New Orleans. I bought it in 2017 and haven’t started it yet because it’s 750+ pages about a pretty heavy subject (race in America). Hopefully, in 2018 I’ll be able to give it time/attention/thought.

7.  The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss- I loved The Name of the Wind, the first in the Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy. This is the follow-up. It’s sitting on my shelf and I’ve been putting off starting it because I want to know that the trilogy will have a conclusion. This book came out in 2011. No word on a release date for number three yet. Hopefully, we’ll hear something about a release date for it in 2018 so that I can start this one!

8. The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett– This is book three of Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles. They follow the adventures of the main character (sometimes he’s a hero, sometimes he’s more anti-hero), a sixteenth-century Scotsman with a talent for getting into and out of trouble. The first two books in this series can work as stand-alones, but supposedly with this one, it becomes more of a series where each book is dependent on the books that came before. These books can be a lot of fun but they’re dense. We hardly ever get inside the main character’s head, so his motives are often a mystery. Sometimes it’s only in seeing the result of an action that we understand why the character did it. They’re also loaded with allusions to classical literature and words and phrases that you need several dictionaries to understand. That means that reading them when you have other stuff on your mind can be a challenge. I really hope I get to make some progress on this series in 2018 though.

9. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset– This is another series that I’d intended to start in 2017. It’s the story of a woman’s life in 14th century Norway, and it hasn’t been out of print since it was initially published in 1927. The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the 1930s and at the time, this trilogy was her only published work. I had intended to begin this year, but the translation that I had felt very laborious. I’ve since learned that the translation by Tiina Nunnally (linked) is the way to go.

10. Nor Gold: The Pirate Captain, Chronicles of A Legend by Kerry Lynne– I read The Pirate Captain, the first book in what is intended to be a trilogy in 2017. I enjoyed it a lot in spite of the fact that there was some serious “borrowing” from Outlander and Pirates of the Carribean in terms of plot and characters! It’s not literary greatness by any means, but it’s a fun historical romantic adventure. I wanted to wait until book 3 is out (projected release is sometime in 2018) before reading this one because it supposedly ends with a cliffhanger, and I have no patience to wait and see what happens!

Top Ten Tuesday: Historical Fiction Recently Added to My TBR List

For The Broke and the Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesday

June 6:  10 Historical Fiction Books That I’ve Recently Added To My TBR List

1. Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbain– This is a story about an interracial romance set in New Orleans that was originally published in 1966, and has never been out of print. The reviews are raves. I’m interested to see how this subject matter (still an issue today) was presented and handled during the heights of the civil rights movement.
2. Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye– I loved Faye’s Jane Steele and I love this Victorian London setting, and Sherlock Holmes. So this account of Sherlock and Watson searching for Jack the Ripper seems right up my ally! Also, the fact that it’s being made into a musical appeals to the theater geek in me!
3. The Sharp Hook of Love by Sherry Jones- I think that the story of Abelard and Heloise is one of the most beautiful (true) stories of forbidden romance. So this imagining of it sparks my interest.
4. The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett– I talked about this one a bit here. It’s not really that new to my TBR (it’s been on a few months) but I think it’s new enough. It’s the third in Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles.
5. A Column of Fire by Ken Follett– I’ve just found out about this one. This is Follett’s latest book in the series that began with The Pillars of the Earth and continued with World Without End. I enjoyed both of those quite a bit so I’m eager to check this one out. It’s not really a series in the conventional sense. All the books take place in a town surrounding a cathedral in England, but they take place several hundred years apart, so there isn’t any overlap in terms of characters, and they can be read as stand alones.
6. Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson– This was recommended to me a while ago, as a really stand out novel. I didn’t go for it immediately since I’m not usually a fan of westerns. But the then I decided to leave my comfort reading zone a bit.
7. Trinity by Leon Uris– I liked Cindy Brandner‘s novel Exit Unicorns a lot. Actually it’s the first a series and the rest of it is also on my TBR list! But she mentioned that this book is one of her all time favorites and served as inspiration for her own work. I’ve read a few other Uris novels, and found him to be a good writer, so I’ll check this one out.
8. Tai-Pan by James Clavell– I read the first book in Clavell’s Asian Saga, Shogun, years ago. All the books are set in different time periods in different Asian countries. They’re linked in that they all focus on the experience of Europeans in Asia, and they explore the impact of the meeting of Eastern and Western culture on both sides. I enjoyed Shogun, and I recently found this book, the second in the series) in a used bookstore, so I picked it up.
9. Shadows and Strongholds by Elizabeth Chadwick– I read  For the King’s Favor, by the same author, and I enjoyed it, so when I saw this in a used bookstore I picked it up.  Most of her novels are based on actual historical people from the middle ages. Her writing is compelling and her books are really well researched.
10. Destiny by Sally Beauman– This is a recent recommendation from a friend who usually shares my taste. She said it’s a bit soap opera-ish, but there are times when that’s exactly what you want!

Anything else I should be adding to my TBR list?

Top 10 Tuesday: Summer Reads Freebie

May 23: Summer Reads Freebie

The Broke and the Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesday . My day job (teaching) gives me time to really catch up on reading in the summer. So I have a list of books about a mile long. But I’ll only share the top ten. These tend to be books I’ve been intending to read forever but will finally have a chance to get to and appreciate. But they’re also books that are being released this summer.

1.  A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara- I’ve seen this recommended everywhere for a long time. Often when that’s the case I find the book itself a bit disappointing. But there are the rare cases that I find the praise is deserved. A 700 page book that’s frequently described as “tragic” and “traumatic” is a bit much to handle while working, but that’s what summer reads are for.
2. Mr. Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker- I will just because it’s Jane Eyre fan fiction but even aside from that it’s supposed to be good. And Jane Eyre fan fiction tends to be good. Check out Wide Saragasso Sea by Jean Rhys or Jane Steele by Lyndsey Faye to see what I mean. They’re totally different for the original novel, and completely different from one another, but very much worth reading.
3. The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff- I read Groff’s Fates and Furies this year, and I loved her writing. This one of her other novels. I also plan to check out Arcadia and some of her short fiction.
4. The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel- I’ll admit that the Flowers in the Attic references appealed to me. 12 year old Fran still lives in me somewhere.
5. The Cottingley Secret by Hazel Gaynor- For some reason I love the story of the Cottingley fairies. This novel imagines it with a duel timeline story (something else I love).
6. The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss- I loved The Name of the Wind, the first in Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles trilogy. This is number 2. I haven’t read it yet, because it’s long (993 pages), but summer is a great time to dig into something long, and absorbing.
7. Seven Stones to Stand or Fall by Diana Gabaldon- I’m an Outlander addict. The wait between books in this series is painful. Its made slightly less painful by the fact that the TV series is very good. But the new season of that doesn’t premiere until September.  So how to make it through the bleak and bitter droughtlander? Well, fortunately author Diana Gabaldon gives fans the “bulges” to enjoy. These are novellas that she writes either about secondary characters, or character backstory.  They’re not as absorbing as the main series of course, but it keeps us addicts sane(ish) until the next book is released.
8. The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett- This is third in Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles series. I think the series is definitely worth reading (based on the first two books) but they’re not easy reads. We don’t really get inside the character’s thoughts much, so it’s often a while before we understand what’s going on and why.  The main character is a brilliantly educated polygot who often makes references that I don’t get right away. So it takes some effort to get into. Over the summer I have the time and mental space for that.
9. The Scribe of Siena by Melodie Winawer- Blame the Outlander comparison for this one! But it actually looks good independent of anything else, and I love historical fiction combined with paranormal/sci-fi stuff.
10. After Anatevka: A Novel Inspired by “Fiddler on the Roof” by Alexandra Silber-  Alexandra Silber is an actress and singer who played the role of Hodel in the 2007 London revival of the musical Fiddler on the Roof. In 2015 she played Hodel’s older sister Tzeitel in the Broadway revival of the same show. In this book she extends her creative reach to imagine the lives of the characters after the events of the musical. I’m interested to see what she does with it. Will her focus be primarily on the two roles that she’s played or will it extend elsewhere? I’m a big fan of Alexandra Silber’s blog, London Still. She’s pretty awesome. In addition to being an actress/singer/novelist, she’s written three modern language adaptation of Greek tragedies. She also teaches musical theater at Pace University, and elsewhere.

Well is there anything that I should add to the list?